In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy
of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 1988) Noam Chomsky and I put forward
a "propaganda model" as a framework for analyzing and understanding
how the mainstream U.S. media work and why they perform as they do. We
had long been impressed with the regularity with which the media
operate within restricted assumptions, depend heavily and uncritically
on elite information sources, and participate in propaganda campaigns
helpful to elite interests. In trying to explain why they do this we
looked for structural factors as the only possible root of systematic
behavior and performance patterns.

The propaganda model was and is in distinct contrast to the
prevailing mainstream explanations -- both liberal and conservative --
of media behavior and performance. These approaches downplay
structural factors, generally presupposing their unimportance or
positive impact because of the multiplicity of agents and thus
competition and diversity. Liberal and conservative analysts emphasize
journalistic conduct, public opinion, and news source initiatives as
the main determining variables. The analysts are inconsistent in this
regard, however. When they discuss media systems in communist or other
authoritarian states, the idea that journalists or public opinion can
override the power of those who own and control the media is dismissed
as nonsense and even considered an apology for tyranny. There is a
distinct difference, too, between the political implications of the
propaganda model and mainstream scholarship. If structural factors
shape the broad contours of media performance, and if that performance
is incompatible with a truly democratic political culture, then a
basic change in media ownership, organization, and purpose is
necessary for the achievement of genuine democracy. In mainstream
analyses such a perspective is politically unacceptable, and its
supportive arguments and evidence are rarely subject to debate.

The Propaganda Model

What is the propaganda model and how does it work? The crucial
structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are
firmly imbedded in the market system. They are profit-seeking
businesses, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); they
are funded largely by advertisers who are also profit-seeking
entities, and who want their ads to appear in a supportive selling
environment. The media are also dependent on government and major
business firms as information sources, and both efficiency and
political considerations, and frequently overlapping interests, cause
a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major
media, and other corporate businesses. Government and large non-media
business firms are also best positioned (and sufficiently wealthy) to
be able to pressure the media with threats of withdrawal of
advertising or TV licenses, libel suits, and other direct and indirect
modes of attack. The media are also constrained by the dominant
ideology, which heavily featured anticommunism before and during the
Cold War era, and was mobilized often to prevent the media from
criticizing attacks on small states labelled communist.

These factors are linked together, reflecting the multi-leveled
capability of powerful business and government entities and
collectives (e.g., the Business Roundtable; U.S. Chamber of Commerce;
industry lobbies and front groups) to exert power over the flow of
information. We noted that the five factors involved -- ownership,
advertising, sourcing, flak, and anticommunist ideology -- work as
"filters" through which information must pass, and that individually
and often in additive fashion they help shape media choices. We
stressed that the filters work mainly by the independent action of
many individuals and organizations; these frequently, but not always,
share a common view of issues and similar interests. In short, the
propaganda model describes a decentralized and non-conspiratorial
market system of control and processing, although at times the
government or one or more private actors may take initiatives and
mobilize coordinated elite handling of an issue.

Propaganda campaigns can occur only when consistent with the
interests of those controlling and managing the filters. For example,
these managers all accepted the view that the Polish government's
crackdown on the Solidarity union in 1980-81 was extremely newsworthy
and deserved severe condemnation; whereas the same interests did not
find the Turkish military government's equally brutal crackdown on
trade unions in Turkey at about the same time to be newsworthy or
reprehensible. In the latter case the U.S. government and business
community liked the military government's anticommunist stance and
open door economic policy; and the crackdown on Turkish unions had the
merit of weakening the Left and keeping wages down. In the Polish
case, propaganda points could be scored against a Soviet-supported
government, and concern could be expressed for workers whose wages
were not paid by Free World employers! The fit of this dichotomization
to corporate interests and anticommunist ideology is obvious.

We used the concepts of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims to describe
this dichotomization, with a trace of irony, as the differential
treatment was clearly related to political and economic advantage
rather than anything like actual worth. In fact, the Polish trade
unionists quickly ceased to be worthy when communism was overthrown
and the workers were struggling against a western-oriented neoliberal
regime. The travails of Polish workers now, like those of Turkish
workers, do not pass through the propaganda model filters. They are
both unworthy victims at this point.

We never claimed that the propaganda model explains everything or
that it shows media omnipotence and complete effectiveness in
manufacturing consent. It is a model of media behavior and
performance, not media effects. We explicitly pointed to alternative
media, grass roots information sources, and public skepticism about
media veracity as important limits on media effectiveness in
propaganda service, and we urged the support and more effective use of
these alternatives. We have frequently pointed to the general public's
disagreement with the media and elite over the morality of the Vietnam
War and the desirability of the assault on Nicaragua in the 1980s
(among other matters). The power of the U.S. propaganda system lies in
its ability to mobilize an elite consensus, to give the appearance of
democratic consent, and to create enough confusion, misunderstanding,
and apathy in the general population to allow elite programs to go
forward. We also emphasized the fact that there are often differences
within the elite that open up space for some debate and even
occasional (but very rare) attacks on the intent, as well as the
tactical means of achieving elite ends.

Although the propaganda model was generally well received on the
Left, some complained of an allegedly pessimistic thrust and
implication of hopeless odds to be overcome. A closely related
objection was its inapplicability to local conflicts where the
possibility of effective resistance was greater. But the propaganda
model does not suggest that local and even larger victories are
impossible, especially where the elites are divided or have limited
interest in an issue. For example, coverage of issues like gun
control, school prayer, and abortion rights may well receive more
varied treatment than, say, global trade, taxation, and economic
policy. Moreover, well organized campaigns by labor, human rights, or
environmental organizations fighting against abusive local businesses
can sometimes elicit positive media coverage. In fact, we would like
to think that the propaganda model even suggests where and how
activists can best deploy their efforts to influence mainstream media
coverage of issues.

The model does suggest that the mainstream media, as elite
institutions, commonly frame news and allow debate only within the
parameters of elite interests; and that where the elite is really
concerned and unified, and/or where ordinary citizens are not aware of
their own stake in an issue or are immobilized by effective
propaganda, the media will serve elite interests uncompromisingly.

Mainstream Liberal and Academic "Left" Critiques

Many liberals and a number of academic media analysts of the left
did not like the propaganda model. Some of them found repugnant a
wholesale condemnation of a system in which they played a respected
role; for them it is a basically sound system, its inequalities of
access regrettable but tolerable, its pluralism and competition
effectively responding to consumer demands. In the postmodernist mode,
global analyses and global solutions are rejected and derided;
individual struggles and small victories are stressed, even by
nominally leftist thinkers.

Many of the critiques displayed barely-concealed anger; and in most
the propaganda model was dismissed with a few superficial cliches
(conspiratorial, simplistic, etc.) without minimal presentation of the
model or subjecting it to the test of evidence. Let me discuss briefly
some of the main criticisms.

Conspiracy theory. We explained in Manufacturing Consent
that critical analyses like ours would inevitably elicit cries of
conspiracy theory, and in a futile effort to prevent this we devoted
several pages of the Preface to showing that the propaganda model is
best described as a "guided market system," and explicitly rejecting
conspiracy. Mainstream critics still could not abandon the charge,
partly because they knew that falsely accusing a radical critique of
conspiracy theory would not cost them anything and partly because of
their superficial assumption that since the media comprise thousands
of "independent" journalists and companies any finding that they
follow a "party line" serving the state must rest on an assumed
conspiracy. (In fact it can result from a widespread gullible
acceptance of official handouts, common internalized beliefs, fear of
reprisal for critical analysis, etc.). The propaganda model explains
media behavior and performance in structural terms, and intent is an
unmeasurable red herring. All we know is that the media and
journalists mislead in tandem -- some no doubt internalize a
propaganda line as true, some may know it is false, but the point is
unknowable and irrelevant.

Failure to take account of media professionalism and
objectivity. Communications professor Dan Hallin argued that we
failed to take account of the maturing of journalist professionalism,
which he claimed to be "central to understanding how the media
operate." (Keeping America On Top of the World, 13) Hallin also
stated that in protecting and rehabilitating the public sphere
"professionalism is surely part of the answer."(4)

But professionalism and objectivity rules are fuzzy, flexible, and
superficial manifestations of deeper power and control relationships.
Professionalism arose in journalism in the years when the newspaper
business was becoming less competitive and more dependent on
advertising. Professionalism was not an antagonistic movement by the
workers against the press owners, but was actively encouraged by many
of the latter. It gave a badge of legitimacy to journalism, ostensibly
assuring readers that the news would not be influenced by the biases
of owners, advertisers, or the journalists themselves. In certain
circumstances it has provided a degree of autonomy, but
professionalism has also internalized some of the commercial values
that media owners hold most dear, like relying on inexpensive official
sources as the credible news source. As Ben Bagdikian has noted,
professionalism has made journalists oblivious to the compromises with
authority they are constantly making. Even Hallin acknowledges that
professional journalism can allow something close to complete
government control via sourcing domination.

While Hallin claimed that the propaganda model cannot explain the
case of media coverage of the Central American wars of the 1980s,
where there was considerable domestic hostility to the Reagan
policies, in fact the propaganda model works extremely well there,
whereas Hallin's focus on "professionalism" fails abysmally. Hallin
acknowledged that "the administration was able more often than not to
prevail in the battle to determine the dominant frame of television
coverage," (64) "the broad patterns in the framing of the story can be
accounted for almost entirely by the evolution of policy and elite
debate in Washington," (74) and "coherent statements of alternative
visions of the world order and U.S. policy rarely appeared in the
news."(77) This is exactly what the propaganda model would forecast.
And if, as Hallin contended, a majority of the public opposed the
elite view, what kind of "professionalism" allows a virtually complete
suppression of the issues as the majority perceives them?

Hallin mentions a "nascent alternative perspective" in reporting on
El Salvador -- a "human rights" framework -- that "never caught hold."
The propaganda model can explain why it never took hold; Hallin does
not. With 700 journalists present at the Salvadoran election of 1982,
allegedly "often skeptical" of election integrity, (72) why did it
yield a "public relations victory" for the administration and a major
falsification of reality (as described in Manufacturing Consent)?
Hallin did not explain this. He never mentioned the Office of Public
Diplomacy or the firing of reporter Raymond Bonner and the work of the
flak machines. He never explained the failure of the media to report
even a tiny fraction of the crimes of the contras in Nicaragua and the
death machines of El Salvador and Guatemala, in contrast with their
inflation of Sandinista misdeeds and double standard in reporting on
the Nicaraguan election of 1984. Given the elite
divisions and public hostility to the Reagan policy, media
subservience was phenomenal and arguably exceeded that which the
propaganda model might have anticipated.2

Failure to explain continued opposition and resistance. Both
Hallin and historian Walter LaFeber (in a review in the New York
Times) pointed to the continued opposition to Reagan's Central
America policy as somehow incompatible with the model. These critics
failed to comprehend that the propaganda model is about how the media
work, not how effective they are. By the logic of this form of
criticism, as many Soviet citizens did not swallow the lines put
forward by Pravda, this demonstrates that Pravda was not serving a
state propaganda function.

Propaganda model too mechanical, functionalist, ignores
existence of space, contestation, and interaction. This set of
criticisms is at the heart of the negative reactions of the serious
left-of-center media analysts such as Philip Schlesinger, James
Curran, Peter Golding, Graham Murdoch, and John Eldridge, as well as
of Dan Hallin. Of these critics, only Schlesinger both summarizes the
elements of our model and discusses our evidence. He acknowledges that
the case studies make telling points, but in the end he finds ours "a
highly deterministic vision of how the media operate coupled with a
straightforward functionalist conception of ideology" (Media,
Culture and Society, 1989). Specifically, we failed to explain the
weights to be given our five filters; we did not allow for external
influences, nor did we offer a "thoroughgoing analysis of the ways in
which economic dynamics operate to structure both the range and form
of press presentations" (quoting Graham Murdoch); and while putting
forward "a powerful effects model" we admit that the system is not
all-powerful, which calls into question our determinism.

The criticism of the propaganda model for functionalism is also
dubious and the critics sometimes seem to call for more functionalism.
The model does describe a system in which the media serve the elite,
but by complex processes incorporated into the model as means whereby
the powerful protect their interests naturally and without overt
conspiracy. This would seem one of the propaganda model's merits; it
shows a dynamic and self-protecting system in operation. The same
corporate community that influences the media through its power as
owner, dominant funder (advertising), and a major news source also
underwrites Accuracy in Media and the American Enterprise Institute to
influence the media through harassment and the provision of "sound"
experts. Critics of propaganda model functionalism like Eldridge and
Schlesinger contradictorily point to the merit of analyses that focus
on "how sources organize media strategies" to achieve their ends.
Apparently it is admirable to analyze micro corporate strategies to
influence the media, but to focus on global corporate efforts to
influence the media -- along with the complementary effects of
thousands of local strategies -- is illegitimate functionalism!

It is also untrue that the propaganda model implies no constraints
on media owners/managers. We spell out the conditions affecting when
the media will be relatively open or closed -- mainly disagreements
among the elite and the extent to which other groups in society are
interested in, informed about, and organized to fight about issues.
But the propaganda model does start from the premise that a critical
political economy will put front and center the analysis of the locus
of media control and the mechanisms by which the powerful are able to
dominate the flow of messages and limit the space of contesting
parties. The limits on their power are certainly important, but why
should they get first place, except as a means of minimizing the power
of the dominant interests, inflating the elements of contestation, and
pretending that the marginalized have more strength than they really
possess?

Enhanced Relevance of the Propaganda Model

The dramatic changes in the economy, communications industries, and
politics over the past decade have tended to enhance the applicability
of the propaganda model. The first two filters -- ownership and
advertising -- have become ever more important. The decline of public
broadcasting, the increase in corporate power and global reach, and
the mergers and centralization of the media, have made bottom line
considerations more controlling. The competition for serving
advertisers has become more intense. Newsrooms have been more
thoroughly incorporated into transnational corporate empires, with
shrunken resources and even less management enthusiasm for
investigative journalism that would challenge the structure of power.
In short, the professional autonomy of journalists has been reduced.

Some argue that the Internet and the new communication technologies
are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an
unprecedented era of interactive democratic media. There is no
evidence to support this view as regards journalism and mass
communication. In fact, one could argue that the new technologies are
exacerbating the problem. They permit media firms to shrink staff
while achieving greater outputs and they make possible global
distribution systems, thus reducing the number of media entities.
Although the new technologies have great potential for democratic
communication, left to the market there is little reason to expect the
Internet to serve democratic ends.

The third and fourth filters -- sourcing and flak -- have also
strengthened as mechanisms of elite influence. A reduction in the
resources devoted to journalism means that those who subsidize the
media by providing sources for copy gain greater leverage. Moreover,
work by people like Alex Carey, John Stauber, and Sheldon Rampton has
helped us see how the public relations industry has been able to
manipulate press coverage of issues on behalf of corporate America.
The PR industry understands how to use journalistic conventions to
serve its own ends. Studies of news sources reveal that a significant
proportion of news originates in the PR industry. There are, by one
conservative count, 20,000 more PR agents working to doctor the news
today than there are journalists writing it.

The fifth filter -- anticommunist ideology -- is possibly weakened
by the collapse of the Soviet Union and global socialism, but this is
easily offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the
"miracle of the market." (Reagan) There is now an almost religious
faith in the market, at least among the elite, so that regardless of
evidence, markets are assumed benevolent and non-market mechanisms are
suspect. When the Soviet economy stagnated in the 1980s, it was
attributed to the absence of markets; when capitalist Russia
disintegrated in the 1990s it was because politicians and workers were
not letting markets work their magic. Journalism has internalized this
ideology. Adding it to the fifth filter, in a world where the global
power of market institutions makes anything other than market options
seem utopian, gives us an ideological package of immense strength.

Further Applications

The propaganda model applies exceedingly well to the media's
treatment of the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the subsequent Mexican crisis and meltdown of 1994-95.
Once again there was a sharp split between the preferences of ordinary
citizens and the elite and business community, with polls consistently
showing substantial majorities opposed to NAFTA -- and to the bailout
of investors in Mexican securities -- but the elite in favor. Media
news coverage, selection of "experts," and opinion columns were skewed
accordingly; their judgment was that the benefits of NAFTA were
obvious, agreed to by all qualified authorities, and that only
demagogues and "special interests" were opposed. Meg Greenfield,
Washington Post Op Ed editor explained the huge imbalance in her
opinion column: "On the rare occasion when columnists of the left,
right, and middle are all in agreement ... I don't believe it is right
to create an artificial balance where none exists." But with a
majority of the public opposing NAFTA, the pro-NAFTA unity among the
pundits simply highlighted the huge elite bias of mainstream punditry.
It may be worth noting that the transnational media corporations have
a distinct self-interest in global trade agreements, as they are among
their foremost beneficiaries.

Final note

In retrospect, perhaps we should have made it clearer that the
propaganda model was about media behavior and performance, with
uncertain and variable effects. Maybe we should have spelled out in
more detail the contesting forces both within and outside the media
and the conditions under which these are likely to be influential. But
we clearly made these points, and it is quite possible that nothing we
could have done would have prevented our being labelled conspiracy
theorists, rigid determinists, and deniers of the possibility that
people can resist (even as we called for resistance).

The propaganda model still seems a very workable framework for
analyzing and understanding the mainstream media -- perhaps even more
so than in 1988. As noted earlier in reference to Central America, it
often surpasses expectations of media subservience to government
propaganda. And we are still waiting for our critics to provide a
better model.

Notes

1. Noam Chomsky analyzes some of these criticisms
in his Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
(Boston: South End Press, 1989),
appendix 1.

3. It should be noted that the case studies in
Manufacturing Consent are only a small proportion of those that
Chomsky and I have done which support the analysis of the propaganda
model. Special mention should be made of those covering the Middle
East, Central America, and terrorism. See esp. Chomsky's
Necessary
Illusions, The Fateful Triangle (London: Pluto Press,
1983), and Pirates & Emperors (Montreal: Black Rose Books,
1987), and my The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End,
1982), and (with Gerry O'Sullivan) The Terrorism Industry (New
York: Pantheon, 1989).

4. In fact, the only attempt to offer an
alternative model was by Nicholas Lemann in the New Republic. For an
analysis of this effort, see Chomsky's Necessary Illusions,
pp. 145-148.

5. For a discussion see Edward Herman, "Labor
Aggression in Mexico," Lies of Our Times (December 1994): 6-7.